Fan Expo '09, Day One!
So! For a few (slightly irritating) reasons, I ended up getting to Fan Expo later than I had originally intended. I bought a weekend pass which enables you to get in a bit early, but I only got there at about quarter to four, so there was already a line up for people picking up advance tickets.
I have to say, there's no feeling like the beginning of a convention. It's fun getting on the subway, and spotting someone or a group of people who you can tell are heading to the con. Guy in the ninja turtles hoodie with his friend wearing a Flash t-shirt? Going to Fan Expo, I can tell.
It's fun to get there and suddenly be surrounded by all this geekery you normally only consume or deal with at your computer or the comics store.
Anyhoo, first thing I did once I got inside the vendor area was to head over to the DC booth (as far as I know, it's the first time they've had one here, though Marvel had one last year). People were lining up all around it, and there was a crapload of free comics. A lot of "After Watchmen...What's Next?" stuff, a couple things from Free Comic Book Day (which is handy, seeing as I missed FCBD), but also Batman and Robin #1 and the first issue of Detective Comics with Batwoman and the Question co-feature.
Here's what I picked up:
Along with free buttons!
The DC Nation panel was at 5 pm, so I headed upstairs to line up, which was a good idea, as the line had already started and was rapidly growing. I ended up sitting in the fourth or fifth row, and by the time everyone had filed in there were people standing at the sides and back.
AND GUESS WHO WAS THERE? Well, there was someone dressed up like someone with whom most people reading this are probably familiar.
Spoiler! It's blurry and dark, but on the far left is Len Wein, and then Spoiler, Dan Didio, then a woman dressed up as a Green Lantern (ack, sorry GL fans, I can never remember the character's name) who was helping with the panel.
I won't re-cap the whole panel for you (mostly because I cannot remember every detail). Dan Didio was hosting it, and at one point he asked the audience who the big character was that everybody was asking about this year. Elaborating, he said that three or four years ago, everybody was talking about Stephanie Brown, adding that they didn't seem to like her as much since she came back (Hnn).
He went off on a bit of a tangent then to tell a story about something that had happened at a panel at a con at some point after they had decided to bring Stephanie back, but well before they'd done it and while her return was still in the works. Apparently a girl came up to the microphone, asked about when Stephanie Brown was going to get a trophy case, etc, and Bill Willingham had been on the panel (who'd written Stephanie Brown's death) and responded by saying he was going to bring Stephanie back to life and kill her again, bring her back to life, and kill her again, and on and on. Didio said that when the girl heard that, she looked like she'd be slapped across the face and was close to tears in reaction to the "joke". So to make up for it, he asked the girl to sit behind Willingham, making Willingham very uncomfortable for the rest of the panel.
But going back to this panel in the here and now, Didio was asking what character the fans were concerned with the most this year. One guy shouted out Wonder Woman, and Didio went on to say that he's been getting letters/postcards from people asking for DC to reorganize the numbering for Wonder Woman (so that all the volumes of Wonder Woman will count toward a total higher number, like with Superman and Batman) and posting them on the door to his office as he gets them. I gather that he won't change the numbering until he gets a certain number of letters/postcards about it. So, if you want Wonder Woman's issue numbers to be in the triple digits, write Dan Didio a letter!
There was also another guy who said he'd like to see Donna Troy be given more visible tie-ins to the Wonder Woman franchise (either in costume or name), but Didio wasn't really sure, as he said Donna Troy just seemed to be one of those characters where nicknames just didn't seem to stick (given that she's definitely not Wonder Girl anymore).
There was lots of discussion about Blackest Night, Flash: Rebirth, and a bit of Batman talk. Ethan Van Scrivener was on the panel, as was Len Wein and an editor on the Flash titles whose name I now forget. One of the things Didio mentioned at one point was that he felt DC had five really strong franchises within the DCU, those being Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern and Flash.
Now, DC Nation panels tend to be a lot of Q & A with the audience, and I had been trying to work up the courage to ask a couple questions. Foremost on my mind were, of course, Oracle and Cassandra Cain, and the general question of diversity.
It's weird. I'm usually good at and at ease with public speaking, I've never really suffered from stage fright all that much, and the overall atmosphere at the DC panels tends to be pretty friendly and welcoming. But sitting in the audience at this panel (and it was the same deal last year, where I didn't ask any questions), I got really nervous at the possibility of asking my questions in front of everybody.
I guess maybe a part of it is that I'm so gosh-darn used to hanging out with all them cool kids at scans_daily and WFA, and that despite all my regular feminist griping, it's so easy to forget that being a fangirl of mainstream superhero comics puts me in the minority. I mean, there was Spoiler dressed up and sitting at the back, there was also a Supergirl in the audience, and other plainclothes women too, but by and large the audience was overwhelmingly male.
And that in and of itself doesn't make it a hostile environment by any means. It was fun to be sitting amongst my fellow comic nerds, chiming in on a debate about whether or not Black Lanterns count as "real" zombies before the panel started and the like. But there was this little insecure fear that grew in me, worrying that I'd be laughed at or shouted down if I brought up my particular gripes or concerns.
I was also afraid of the sort of thing that XKCD illustrates so precisely:
In about the last 20 minutes of the panel, they were going through the questions a bit faster, and I started putting my hand up to ask my question. It was a little frustrating, because every time Dan Didio pointed in my direction, he was actually pointing at one of the people sitting near or behind me.
There were only a few minutes left, and I was getting a bit more insistent with my hand-raising but to no avail, though at one point a guy sitting in the row behind me gave me a sympathetic look. And a couple minutes later when that same guy had raised his hand and Dan Didio had pointed to him, the guy point at me and said "I think this girl here's been waiting a while to have her question answered", and Didio was all "oh, sure!"
Now, I may not remember this word for word (remember: ack, nervousness!), but I brought up how he'd said that DC had these five main franchises (Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Flash), and that I thought that was great and I think it made DC Comics pretty strong as a result, but were there any thoughts about maybe trying to diversify that a bit? (I should've expanded that by saying "you've got four white guys and one woman...", but again: ack nervousness, I was lucky I was making any sense at all!)
I think I may have started to say, "this may be because of who my favourite character is, but..." because he asked me who my favourite character was. I told him it was Oracle, and that I felt that she was someone who really should be up there on the same level as all those other big names who are considered franchises within the DCU. I wasn't fully aware of how the rest of the audience was reacting to this, but I think I heard a few noises of agreement.
Didio said that she was going to play an extremely important role in Batgirl, and I think I cut in saying that I didn't think she should be contained to just that one book, at which point a guy chimed in saying that she should at least have a bigger presence in the Bat-world. Somewhere in there I said that I didn't like the sort of negative spiral that Oracle had been in since the ending of BoP and Oracle: The Cure.
Then Dan Didio said he'd give us something of a vague spoiler, and that was that we're going to see Oracle set up shop in the Batcave. (Which, I have to admit, is intriguing, especially since Dick now has the Bat-bunker or whatever.)
I was still desperate to bring up Cassandra Cain, so I asked if I could ask a quick follow-up question, and he said of course, and I said I was sad to see Cassandra Cain bowing out and were there any plans for her? I think he kind of hesitated for a second and then said, "you know what? 2010. 2010." I said "okay, thank you! [pause] OH WAIT! And-not-as-a-villain, right?", and it sounded like he said no at first, and then he said no promises. (Which I will interpret as a "no", but that he doesn't want to give too much away. Reckless optimism, I has it.)
So, I asked Oracle and Cass Cain, and managed to at least bring up the word "diversity". (AW YEAH Fangirling for justice!) I'm glad I was able to ask my questions, but I suspect I owe that to the guy who let me take his question. (I feel bad now, because I realize I didn't get to thank him. Thank you, whoever you are!)
After the panel ended, I rushed to the back where the girl dressed as Spoiler was sitting and asked if I could get a picture of her. (You know, for my Internet friends. XD I didn't actually say that.)
The picture doesn't do it justice. (LOL! I just noticed the guy in the background with the very, uh, loud shirt.)
The guy she was with said that he sewed parts of it, but that they'd had a professional costumer do the rest. I was impressed with the detail. nevermore999 can correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks to be based on how her costume looked in her earlier days, what with the black underwear and all. But there's the thing around the leg, the stuff in the belt, the belt-thing that crosses her torso (you can tell I'm all about the technical terms for things), and she even had the boots, with one folded down and the other up. Very impressive!
After that I grabbed a snack and later headed back into the main area, where my main goal was to acquire the full run of Batgirl, as in the 73-issue series featuring Cassandra Cain. I talked to one vendor who said he had a set but didn't have it here, and he directed me to another guy who was really helpful and directed me to another vendor who had the whole run all nice and packaged! The price was $150, which seems like a lot, but it puts each issue at about 2 bucks, and given that #1 was originally priced at $3.95 and #73 was $3.50 (both in Canadian dollars), so I guess it was a good deal.
At any rate, the total cost is cheaper than if I'd bought it off of e-bay from someone in the US and then have to pay something ridiculous for shipping it to Canada. The downside is that I promised myself that if I bought the full run of Batgirl, I'd have to forbid myself from buying comics for the rest of the year, lest I completely impoverish myself.
So...it looks like I'm going to have to stand by that, exceptions possibly being the very occasional indie stuff by Canadian creators. I'll figure it out. I mean, it's not like I'm going to run out of comics to read, because I do have a number of books that I have but haven't read yet. I'll probably keep track of what comics I'm not buying and then hunt them down when I've got more of a financial buffer.
The Batgirl comics were, as you can see, packaged very well and interspersed with boards, making the entire thing rather big and heavy. Fortunately I had a cloth bag with me (Toronto has now banned retailers from giving out free plastic bags, so unless you want to plunk down a nickel for a plastic bag wherever you shop, you bring your own bag: mine is green with polka-dots and folds up really tiny!), so it wasn't too hard to carry. But I didn't feel like walking around with the thing, and there weren't any other panels I was really all that desperate to attend, so I headed home.
But before I had quite left, I took this photo:
I like the fact that Harley is wearing mismatched socks, matching her colour scheme.
That was Fan Expo '09, day one!
And then I went shopping at Ikea, for entirely unconnected reasons which I will not discuss here. =P
The end!
I have to say, there's no feeling like the beginning of a convention. It's fun getting on the subway, and spotting someone or a group of people who you can tell are heading to the con. Guy in the ninja turtles hoodie with his friend wearing a Flash t-shirt? Going to Fan Expo, I can tell.
It's fun to get there and suddenly be surrounded by all this geekery you normally only consume or deal with at your computer or the comics store.
Anyhoo, first thing I did once I got inside the vendor area was to head over to the DC booth (as far as I know, it's the first time they've had one here, though Marvel had one last year). People were lining up all around it, and there was a crapload of free comics. A lot of "After Watchmen...What's Next?" stuff, a couple things from Free Comic Book Day (which is handy, seeing as I missed FCBD), but also Batman and Robin #1 and the first issue of Detective Comics with Batwoman and the Question co-feature.
Here's what I picked up:
Along with free buttons!
The DC Nation panel was at 5 pm, so I headed upstairs to line up, which was a good idea, as the line had already started and was rapidly growing. I ended up sitting in the fourth or fifth row, and by the time everyone had filed in there were people standing at the sides and back.
AND GUESS WHO WAS THERE? Well, there was someone dressed up like someone with whom most people reading this are probably familiar.
Spoiler! It's blurry and dark, but on the far left is Len Wein, and then Spoiler, Dan Didio, then a woman dressed up as a Green Lantern (ack, sorry GL fans, I can never remember the character's name) who was helping with the panel.
I won't re-cap the whole panel for you (mostly because I cannot remember every detail). Dan Didio was hosting it, and at one point he asked the audience who the big character was that everybody was asking about this year. Elaborating, he said that three or four years ago, everybody was talking about Stephanie Brown, adding that they didn't seem to like her as much since she came back (Hnn).
He went off on a bit of a tangent then to tell a story about something that had happened at a panel at a con at some point after they had decided to bring Stephanie back, but well before they'd done it and while her return was still in the works. Apparently a girl came up to the microphone, asked about when Stephanie Brown was going to get a trophy case, etc, and Bill Willingham had been on the panel (who'd written Stephanie Brown's death) and responded by saying he was going to bring Stephanie back to life and kill her again, bring her back to life, and kill her again, and on and on. Didio said that when the girl heard that, she looked like she'd be slapped across the face and was close to tears in reaction to the "joke". So to make up for it, he asked the girl to sit behind Willingham, making Willingham very uncomfortable for the rest of the panel.
But going back to this panel in the here and now, Didio was asking what character the fans were concerned with the most this year. One guy shouted out Wonder Woman, and Didio went on to say that he's been getting letters/postcards from people asking for DC to reorganize the numbering for Wonder Woman (so that all the volumes of Wonder Woman will count toward a total higher number, like with Superman and Batman) and posting them on the door to his office as he gets them. I gather that he won't change the numbering until he gets a certain number of letters/postcards about it. So, if you want Wonder Woman's issue numbers to be in the triple digits, write Dan Didio a letter!
There was also another guy who said he'd like to see Donna Troy be given more visible tie-ins to the Wonder Woman franchise (either in costume or name), but Didio wasn't really sure, as he said Donna Troy just seemed to be one of those characters where nicknames just didn't seem to stick (given that she's definitely not Wonder Girl anymore).
There was lots of discussion about Blackest Night, Flash: Rebirth, and a bit of Batman talk. Ethan Van Scrivener was on the panel, as was Len Wein and an editor on the Flash titles whose name I now forget. One of the things Didio mentioned at one point was that he felt DC had five really strong franchises within the DCU, those being Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern and Flash.
Now, DC Nation panels tend to be a lot of Q & A with the audience, and I had been trying to work up the courage to ask a couple questions. Foremost on my mind were, of course, Oracle and Cassandra Cain, and the general question of diversity.
It's weird. I'm usually good at and at ease with public speaking, I've never really suffered from stage fright all that much, and the overall atmosphere at the DC panels tends to be pretty friendly and welcoming. But sitting in the audience at this panel (and it was the same deal last year, where I didn't ask any questions), I got really nervous at the possibility of asking my questions in front of everybody.
I guess maybe a part of it is that I'm so gosh-darn used to hanging out with all them cool kids at scans_daily and WFA, and that despite all my regular feminist griping, it's so easy to forget that being a fangirl of mainstream superhero comics puts me in the minority. I mean, there was Spoiler dressed up and sitting at the back, there was also a Supergirl in the audience, and other plainclothes women too, but by and large the audience was overwhelmingly male.
And that in and of itself doesn't make it a hostile environment by any means. It was fun to be sitting amongst my fellow comic nerds, chiming in on a debate about whether or not Black Lanterns count as "real" zombies before the panel started and the like. But there was this little insecure fear that grew in me, worrying that I'd be laughed at or shouted down if I brought up my particular gripes or concerns.
I was also afraid of the sort of thing that XKCD illustrates so precisely:
In about the last 20 minutes of the panel, they were going through the questions a bit faster, and I started putting my hand up to ask my question. It was a little frustrating, because every time Dan Didio pointed in my direction, he was actually pointing at one of the people sitting near or behind me.
There were only a few minutes left, and I was getting a bit more insistent with my hand-raising but to no avail, though at one point a guy sitting in the row behind me gave me a sympathetic look. And a couple minutes later when that same guy had raised his hand and Dan Didio had pointed to him, the guy point at me and said "I think this girl here's been waiting a while to have her question answered", and Didio was all "oh, sure!"
Now, I may not remember this word for word (remember: ack, nervousness!), but I brought up how he'd said that DC had these five main franchises (Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Flash), and that I thought that was great and I think it made DC Comics pretty strong as a result, but were there any thoughts about maybe trying to diversify that a bit? (I should've expanded that by saying "you've got four white guys and one woman...", but again: ack nervousness, I was lucky I was making any sense at all!)
I think I may have started to say, "this may be because of who my favourite character is, but..." because he asked me who my favourite character was. I told him it was Oracle, and that I felt that she was someone who really should be up there on the same level as all those other big names who are considered franchises within the DCU. I wasn't fully aware of how the rest of the audience was reacting to this, but I think I heard a few noises of agreement.
Didio said that she was going to play an extremely important role in Batgirl, and I think I cut in saying that I didn't think she should be contained to just that one book, at which point a guy chimed in saying that she should at least have a bigger presence in the Bat-world. Somewhere in there I said that I didn't like the sort of negative spiral that Oracle had been in since the ending of BoP and Oracle: The Cure.
Then Dan Didio said he'd give us something of a vague spoiler, and that was that we're going to see Oracle set up shop in the Batcave. (Which, I have to admit, is intriguing, especially since Dick now has the Bat-bunker or whatever.)
I was still desperate to bring up Cassandra Cain, so I asked if I could ask a quick follow-up question, and he said of course, and I said I was sad to see Cassandra Cain bowing out and were there any plans for her? I think he kind of hesitated for a second and then said, "you know what? 2010. 2010." I said "okay, thank you! [pause] OH WAIT! And-not-as-a-villain, right?", and it sounded like he said no at first, and then he said no promises. (Which I will interpret as a "no", but that he doesn't want to give too much away. Reckless optimism, I has it.)
So, I asked Oracle and Cass Cain, and managed to at least bring up the word "diversity". (AW YEAH Fangirling for justice!) I'm glad I was able to ask my questions, but I suspect I owe that to the guy who let me take his question. (I feel bad now, because I realize I didn't get to thank him. Thank you, whoever you are!)
After the panel ended, I rushed to the back where the girl dressed as Spoiler was sitting and asked if I could get a picture of her. (You know, for my Internet friends. XD I didn't actually say that.)
The picture doesn't do it justice. (LOL! I just noticed the guy in the background with the very, uh, loud shirt.)
The guy she was with said that he sewed parts of it, but that they'd had a professional costumer do the rest. I was impressed with the detail. nevermore999 can correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks to be based on how her costume looked in her earlier days, what with the black underwear and all. But there's the thing around the leg, the stuff in the belt, the belt-thing that crosses her torso (you can tell I'm all about the technical terms for things), and she even had the boots, with one folded down and the other up. Very impressive!
After that I grabbed a snack and later headed back into the main area, where my main goal was to acquire the full run of Batgirl, as in the 73-issue series featuring Cassandra Cain. I talked to one vendor who said he had a set but didn't have it here, and he directed me to another guy who was really helpful and directed me to another vendor who had the whole run all nice and packaged! The price was $150, which seems like a lot, but it puts each issue at about 2 bucks, and given that #1 was originally priced at $3.95 and #73 was $3.50 (both in Canadian dollars), so I guess it was a good deal.
At any rate, the total cost is cheaper than if I'd bought it off of e-bay from someone in the US and then have to pay something ridiculous for shipping it to Canada. The downside is that I promised myself that if I bought the full run of Batgirl, I'd have to forbid myself from buying comics for the rest of the year, lest I completely impoverish myself.
So...it looks like I'm going to have to stand by that, exceptions possibly being the very occasional indie stuff by Canadian creators. I'll figure it out. I mean, it's not like I'm going to run out of comics to read, because I do have a number of books that I have but haven't read yet. I'll probably keep track of what comics I'm not buying and then hunt them down when I've got more of a financial buffer.
The Batgirl comics were, as you can see, packaged very well and interspersed with boards, making the entire thing rather big and heavy. Fortunately I had a cloth bag with me (Toronto has now banned retailers from giving out free plastic bags, so unless you want to plunk down a nickel for a plastic bag wherever you shop, you bring your own bag: mine is green with polka-dots and folds up really tiny!), so it wasn't too hard to carry. But I didn't feel like walking around with the thing, and there weren't any other panels I was really all that desperate to attend, so I headed home.
But before I had quite left, I took this photo:
I like the fact that Harley is wearing mismatched socks, matching her colour scheme.
That was Fan Expo '09, day one!
And then I went shopping at Ikea, for entirely unconnected reasons which I will not discuss here. =P
The end!